6

and brutal refusal to use language as a buffer, would call the society-boarder industry' is likely to get checked as soon as it becomes common, and so known. Its only chance of being really successful is for it to be secret. It is a plan of earning money which withers the moment it is exposed to the light of day. Indeed, the whole industry, and not merely particular examples of it, may be said to hang by a thread. Suppose some unscrupulous playwright were to put the society boarder' into a farce, or that Mr. Anstey were to make on such a subject a sequel to 'The Travelling Companions!' Under such circumstances Othello's occupation would be gone, and many pleasant houses now kept open by means of the boarder's 'honoraria' of 2,000l. a year would put up their shutters. Put on the alert by 'Punch' or the Play, we should all be scrutinising each other's houses for society boarders, and the most harmless of nieces and sisters-in-law would be regarded with suspicion. There would be a sort of boarder-hunt in every street, and 'Do you think that Miss Frances Smith is really Mrs. Smith's sister-in-law, or only a boarder of the same name?' would be a constant inquiry.

Let us hope, for the sake of the women and ladies of title--some choose one appellation, some the other who want to receive a young lady as 'resident, companion, and friend' at 2,000l. per annum, that the wicked wit of the farce-monger or the comic essayist will not be practised on them, and that their trade will be spared. After all, it is a very harmless one, and doubtless has kept many a struggling family above water. It is not, perhaps, quite honest, but then, as

Mr. Loudon Dodd explained to Mr. Pinkerton, 'honesty is not as easy as blind-man's-buff,' and she who, under the temptation of pecuniary difficulties, does nothing more dishonest than impose a society boarder on her friends may almost consider she has succeeded in morally holding her own.

It is curious to speculate upon the situation created by the presence of a society boarder paying 2,000l. a year in an aristocratic home. For that sum, no doubt, the boarder expects a very well 'run' establishment, carriage, butler, and footman, and everything else in proportion. If she does not get these, and if also she does not get quite as much high-toned' society as she expects, does she, we wonder, complain? At Mrs. Todgers's 'the gentlemen' complained very vigorously if they did not have enough gravy, and talked of parting this day week in consequence of the cheese. Do the society boarders, when they do not have enough social gravy, talk of parting this day week? Would, for example, Miss Rancher, the Cattle Queen from Blaineville Co., take Lady Mountargent, of Ballybunion-Irish Viscount's widow, three daughters, and a house in Queen's Gate-aside after breakfast, and remark :

'When I was thinking of coming to you, "Lady Mountargent-no, this is a serious matter of business, and till it is settled I really can't call you Aunt Mounty -you told me that you mixed in the highest society, and that I should see at your table the British aristocracy at its brightest and best. As an American citizen, you understand, I don't care a snap about your aristocracy, but I don't intend to go on paying for them with

out having them. I have been here a quarter, and one Lord-you said he was an Earl, but I guess I looked him out in the book, and he was only a Baron, and an Irish one at that-has crossed the door. Now, we Americans are not in the habit of letting ourselves be put on. Perhaps you are keeping back the best for yourself and the girls, and thinking a lot of common. people, Baronets and that trash, is good enough for me. Any way, there's got to be an alteration, and unless I see a little more variety in the way of society I'll have to leave right away. Now, I haven't seen any of those Dukes with a far-away look in their blue eyes, and a curly moustache, and a regular old-time set of manners ever so haughty and grand, that they write about in the novels, and I am just dying to. If you can't raise that sort, well, I guess there's others that can, and we'd better part. No offence, of course, but we Americans like things to go slick, and if they don't we ain't satisfied till they do. You've never had such complaints before? Maybe. Well, you've got 'em now, any way. Sorry if I've said anything unpleasant, but just you worry round and get one of those real old-time nobles I was speaking of and you'll find I'm all right. Get me fixed with a man I can see has had ancestors who've waded through blood, and you won't find me any trouble. A child could play with me when I'm getting what I think fair.'

Under such circumstances, what does the poor lady of title do, we wonder. It would sound like a confession of weakness, besides being very humiliating, to point out how scarce Dukes are in England. At the same time 2,000l. a year, paid quarterly, is not to be despised.

And even if the ordinary boarder is not quite so exacting as this, there must be plenty of other possible sources of friction. Suppose the girls draw away the boarders' young men by their superior attractions: what happens then, we wonder? The situation is evidently full of difficulties, and, on the whole, we do not envy the woman of title. Better cold mutton without a society boarder, than ortolans with. That, however, is evidently not the opinion of many people-witness the number of advertisements daily appearing.

283

INANE JOCULARITIES

THERE is nothing in the world which produces the sense of mental nausea more completely, or is more certain to turn the intellectual stomach, than the use of certain jocularities of speech with which many persons think fit to adorn their conversation. The people who seem to find it impossible to speak of an unmarried man except as 'a gay bachelor,' with whom the sea is always the briny' or the 'herring pond,' and a horse 'a fiery steed,' who eternally talk about 'Sunday go-tomeeting' clothes, and who have such phrases as 'no extra charge,'' agitate the tintinabulator,'' the noxious weed,' 'the pipe of peace,' 'forty winks,' and 'braving the elements' for ever on their lips are capable of producing a sense of disgust in those who care to see language kept bright and clean, which is absolutely intolerable. It is difficult to say whether these cant phrases that is a perfectly proper description of them

-are more odious when used consciously or unconsciously; that is, by people who believe them to be funny, and intend that their hearers should consider them funny, or by those who have merely caught them up and repeat them like parrots, and without any intention, good or bad.

In our

own opinion, the use of 'common form'